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Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Stopped Making Sense

I feel like Alice down the rabbit hole. There are four turkeys defrosting in my bathtub, seven GALLONS of vegetable oil by the turkey fryer, and five boxes of chicken broth on the kitchen counter. This is highly unusual. And, amongst other dishes that I’m cooking today, I will also be making gravy and stuffing for the first time.

I don’t eat turkey. Nor do I eat gravy or stuffing. And it’s not that I’m just going through some vegetarian phase. I’ve never eaten these things. Ever.

To top it all off, The Carnivore and the three-year-old have decided to build a fire today. While normally this might seem sweet and cozy and traditional and all that, it is going to be seventy degrees outside today. And the bloody fireplace is in the kitchen where I am cooking all day long as I prepare for Thanksgiving WHILE wearing a 10-pound infant in a sling around my chest. I’m sweating buckets here.

This is not how I pictured my life.

I blame The Carnivore. Ten years ago, we had our first date during Thanksgiving weekend. That particular Thanksgiving morning, I straggled out of bed, after staying out too late the night before, just in time to take a quick shower, drink a pot of coffee, and drive to my mother’s house for Thanksgiving lunch. I didn’t cook anything. I was 24 years old and too oblivious to do anything but show up empty-handed, eat my fill, and mosey on back home to see if my housemate wanted to go out and see a band play.

It was either that night or the following night that I ran into The Carnivore at the now-defunct Engine Room and thus began the romance which led me here, to this day, in which I find myself roasting a couple of turkey legs in the oven so that I can use the (argh) drippings in my stuffing. Which, like I said, I won’t even be eating.

Two years after that first date, The Carnivore (then at boyfriend status) and I spent Thanksgiving weekend in Charleston for a friend’s wedding. My first inkling that Life With The Carnivore was going to be a little upside down for me should have come when I spent the reception dancing with the best man because The Carnivore was outside watching the UGA vs. GA Tech football game on a mini handheld television that he had smuggled to the wedding.

And still I married him. And I love him to this day. Even as my house fills with the smell of roasting turkey.